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At the Court
On Wednesday, the dispute over congressional redistricting in Missouri returned to the Supreme Court’s interim docket, when opponents of the state’s new map, which favors Republicans, once more asked the justices to prevent it from being used in November’s elections. A response to the request is due today by 10 a.m. EDT. Learn more about the case in the On Site section below.
On Sunday, the Trump administration again appealed a dispute over President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the states and civic groups challenging implementation of the order filed responses to that request. For more on the new filings, see the On Site section.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for it to use the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to identify noncitizens on state voter rolls. A response to the administration’s request is due on Tuesday, Sept. 15, by 4 p.m. EDT.
Morning Reads
DOJ asks US Supreme Court to allow Trump ally to remain Nevada's top federal prosecutor
Nate Raymond, Reuters (paywalled)
In a new petition for review, the Trump administration has asked “the U.S. Supreme Court to condone its efforts to bypass the usual processes to appoint new leaders for U.S. Attorney’s Offices nationwide, after a federal appeals court ruled that Sigal Chattah is not validly serving as the lead federal prosecutor in Nevada,” according to Reuters. As a result of the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Chattah was disqualified “from supervising three criminal cases.” Reuters noted that “[t]wo other federal appeals courts have handed down similar rulings in recent months, concluding that Trump allies were unlawfully installed to lead U.S. Attorney’s Offices without U.S. Senate approval.” In the petition, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer “said the three rulings conflict with the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which he said the executive branch has long interpreted to allow the attorney general to delegate power when various offices are vacant.”
Surrogate who had baby against parents’ wishes pulls Supreme Court into high-profile custody fight
Kelsey Reichmann, Courthouse News Service
On Wednesday, a surrogate from Alaska, McKenna West, urged the Supreme Court “to intervene in a multistate custody dispute over a California couple’s critically ill newborn,” according to Courthouse News Service. “The dispute began after a 20-week anatomy scan revealed” the fetus had a heart condition, and Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, for whom she was carrying the baby, “opted to terminate the pregnancy.” West refused to do so, and traveled to Texas, where abortions are prohibited. After the baby was born, “[a] California court issued a judgment establishing Ahmed and Gilkar’s parental rights,” but West is now asking “the Supreme Court to invalidate the couple’s parentage order so she can influence the newborn’s ongoing medical care.”
Trump administration proposes changes to census that could exclude millions
Amy B Wang, The Washington Post (paywalled)
On Wednesday, the Census Bureau suggested adding a citizenship question to the 2030 census, as part of a broader overhaul of the decennial questionnaire, according to The Washington Post. “The proposal argues that the census count should exclude any undocumented immigrants and noncitizens without permanent residency because they are ‘not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a “usual residence” in the United States.’” “Trump administration officials also want to prohibit the Census Bureau from asking certain demographic questions, including about race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.” The Post noted that President Donald “Trump has for years pushed to alter how the American population is tallied every decade,” contending that people who are in the United States illegally should not influence how much federal funding a state receives or how many representatives it has in Congress. This push “include[d] unsuccessful efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. The Supreme Court ultimately froze that plan, saying Trump officials had provided a ‘contrived’ reason for wanting such information.” New legal challenges are expected in response to Wednesday’s proposal.
Salvadorans to Keep Deportation Protections for Now, Trump Officials Say
Jazmine Ulloa, Madeleine Ngo, and Annie Correal, The New York Times (paywalled)
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could end the Temporary Protected Status “program for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.” Since then, the administration has moved forward with pausing or terminating TPS protections “for 13 of the 17 countries once covered,” according to The New York Times. However, on Wednesday, federal officials granted a reprieve to TPS holders from El Salvador, whose protections were set to expire that day. The administration said “it would not move to cancel temporary humanitarian protections for more than 170,000 Salvadorans, for now,” adding that more information would come “at the appropriate time.” The Times noted that El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, supports Salvadorans’ participation in the TPS program for economic reasons and has been an ally to the White House on other immigration issues. Additionally, the Times reported that, “[i]n recent days, dozens of Latino evangelical leaders, T.P.S. holders and immigrant rights supporters have petitioned lawmakers in Washington calling for long-term protections.”
An appeals court is considering a push to restrict most common abortion method
Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press
A U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit panel “heard arguments Wednesday over whether prescribing rules should be tightened for a key drug used” in medication abortion, mifepristone, in order to, among other things, end mail access to it. The “arguments were part of a case brought by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and Rosalie Markezich, who says she was coerced into taking abortion pills,” according to the Associated Press. The panel’s eventual ruling is not expected to immediately affect access to mifepristone, “because the Supreme Court [in May] blocked changes to the prescribing rules until it sees the case again.”
The Emergency Supreme Court Order of Sept. 12, 2001
Gregg Costa, The Wall Street Journal (paywalled)
In a column for The Wall Street Journal, Gregg Costa, who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist during the 2001-02 term, described the scene at the Supreme Court Building on Sept. 11, 2001, and explained why he sees a capital case considered by the justices the next day as “the most memorable case” addressed during his clerkship. “The ruling was an order refusing to lift a lower court’s stay of execution – a decision of utmost importance to one of the parties, but a routine matter for the justices. The order announced no new legal holding, and the majority opinion takes up a single paragraph, followed by a two-paragraph dissent from my former boss, Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The significance was the day it was decided: Sept. 12, 2001,” Costa wrote. “The two pages it occupies in the U.S. Reports quietly announce that the Supreme Court, like the rest of the country, wouldn’t be deterred from its work.”
On Site
Court News
Missouri congressional redistricting dispute returns to the Supreme Court
Just one day after Justice Brett Kavanaugh left in place a ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court that barred Missouri from using a new congressional map in the November elections, the opponents of that map returned to the Supreme Court. In a 25-page filing on Wednesday afternoon, Richard von Glahn and a group known as People Not Politicians asked the court to block a subsequent ruling by a federal judge that would require the state to use the new map.
Court News
States, civic groups urge Supreme Court to leave order in place prohibiting Trump administration from implementing parts of mail-in ballot rule
California, joined by a group of 22 states and the District of Columbia, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to leave in place a ruling by a federal judge in Boston that prohibits the Trump administration from implementing parts of a U.S. Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots. Ian Fein, California’s deputy solicitor general, told the justices that “USPS’ unprecedented experiment with our Nation’s most cherished franchise—the right to vote—is unlawful.”
Contributor Corner
Justice Kavanaugh stands up for state constitutional law in the Missouri congressional case
In their Brothers in Law column, Akhil and Vikram Amar applauded Justice Brett Kavanaugh for denying Missouri’s request to use its new congressional map in the 2026 elections. “Republicans wanted the Supreme Court to jump in and second-guess a state supreme court on what is essentially a matter of state constitutional law,” they wrote. “It would have been both legally wrong and politically damaging for the court to have done so.”
Contributor Corner
Aesthetic injuries, standing, and the White House ballroom
In his Courtly Observations column, Erwin Chemerinsky revisited the interim docket case on the new White House ballroom, reflecting on how the court’s decision to allow construction to proceed could affect future disputes involving environmental laws. The decision “left in doubt when claims of aesthetic injuries – which are pivotal to bringing some environmental harm claims against the federal government – will be sufficient to allow plaintiffs to sue,” he wrote.
A Closer Look
Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, Inc. v. Frederic
Twenty-six years ago, Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, expanding religious freedom protections for prisoners and for religious organizations or individuals seeking to challenge zoning laws. During the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court clarified the reach of the “institutionalized persons” part of RLUIPA, holding in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections that state employees may not be held liable under the law in their personal capacities for violating a prisoner’s religious rights unless certain conditions are met. Now, the justices have been asked to address RLUIPA’s other half by taking up a dispute over religious land use protections at a proposed shrine to the Virgin Mary in northern Kentucky.
A nonprofit organization called Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, Inc. hopes to build the shrine – as well as a surrounding plaza, walking path, and retaining wall – next to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Park Hills, Kentucky. In March 2021, it notified local officials of its plan and applied for a conditional use permit and setback variances, which were needed because the neighborhood is zoned for single-family and two-family residential buildings, and the construction of other types of buildings is tightly regulated. The Park Hills Board of Adjustment approved its application the next month, but a couple who live across the street from the church and had raised concerns about the shrine creating traffic issues, Joel and Elizabeth Frederic, challenged that decision in state court.
The Frederics asserted that the board misapplied relevant ordinances and that the shrine project could not move forward under current zoning regulations. Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist countered that, if the board had denied the permit, the decision would have run afoul of RLUIPA, which prohibits government officials from imposing or implementing rules for land use that substantially interfere with religious practice unless they have a compelling reason to do so. The law also bars officials from treating religious individuals or organizations less favorably than nonreligious individuals or organizations.
A state circuit court sided with Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist and the board, clearing the way for the shrine project to proceed. However, an appeals court reversed that decision, determining that the board has exceeded its authority by approving the permit and variances and that the board could deny the project without violating RLUIPA. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Kentucky affirmed that ruling, holding that enforcing zoning regulations and blocking the shrine would not violate RLUIPA because the rules for religious projects are not different than the rules for nonreligious projects and because the rules would allow for the construction of a smaller shrine on a different part of the church’s property.
In March, Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, arguing that the ruling from the Supreme Court of Kentucky stems from persistent confusion over how to apply “RLUIPA’s Substantial Burden and Equal Terms Provisions in the context of land-use-regulations.” “More than a quarter century after RLUIPA’s enactment, lower courts remain deeply divided on the statute’s two basic guarantees, offering a multiplicity of conflicting standards, factors, and burden-shifting frameworks,” the petition for review says.
Initially, the Frederics waived their right to respond to the petition, but the court requested a response. In that brief, filed last month, they contend that while there may be “minor variations” in how lower courts interpret and apply RLUIPA, the petition fails to prove that these variations would have led to a different ruling if the case had been before a different court. The Frederics add that they “don’t dispute that RLUIPA confers important rights that protect religious liberty and exercise,” but assert that it does not require a different outcome in this case.
Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, Inc. v. Frederic is scheduled to be considered by the justices at their “long conference” on Sept. 28.
SCOTUS Quote
JUSTICE SCALIA: “… Now, it may be a stupid law, but I don't see why it's – why it's unconstitutional.”
MR. BRUNSTAD: “Because it's perfectly legitimate advice about perfectly lawful activity –”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “So it's a stupid law.”
MR. BRUNSTAD: “– Well, what happens is that basically it interferes with the lawyer's ability through speech to communicate full and candid advice to the client.”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “Exactly. And that's why it's a stupid law.”
MR. BRUNSTAD: “And ultimately under –”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “Now, where is the prohibition of stupid laws in the Constitution?”
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